Category: Highlight_Dynamic

The ECOC Exhibition is the largest optical communications exhibition in Europe, held each September in a different European city, the event is the key meeting place for decision makers from across the fibre optic communications technology industry.
Now in its 22nd year, the exhibition now attracts over 5,000 decision makers from all around the world - bringing together manufacturers, suppliers and service providers to networking, gain insights on the latest developments, new products and trends in the industry.

The free-to-attend Space Tech Expo & Conference is Europe's meeting place for space business, technology & innovation. The three-day trade fair will showcase the latest from technical designers, sub-system suppliers, manufacturers and components through the systems integrators for civil, military and commercial space.

A paper written by Mr. J. Lauzon, T. Oleszczak, and S. El Kharraz and entitled Board Edge Mount Active Optical Connector will be presented at the Avionics and Vehicle Fiber-Optics and Photonics Conference 2017 (AVFOP).

Summary of the article

Reflex Photonics Inc. has developed compact 40G full duplex (4+4) 10Gbps/lane optical fiber transceivers for harsh environment applications such as Aerospace and Defense.
These products were made to be embedded on printed-circuit boards in close proximity to high speed electronics in high performance embedded computing systems to optimize their performance. Going one step further, the industry was asking for these transceivers to be integrated in board edge connectors to free-up more space on the board and avoid optical fiber handling. This implied important challenges for bi-planar position tolerancing between the electrical interface on a horizontal board and the optical interface based on a multi-fiber MT ferrule, in an orthogonal plane. We will present how these challenges were confronted with success.

The final configuration of the active optical connector is called the LightCONEX.

Avionics and Vehicle Fiber-Optics and Photonics Conference
November 7 to 9, 2017

Reflex Photonics is proud to announce the launch of new SNAP12 120G modules targeting advanced manufacturing, industrial automation, and machine vision markets. The operation temperature now ranges from −40 ºC to 95 ºC. Reflex Photonics is also continuously improving its SNAP12 range for its current inflight entertainment system (IFES) clients.
This SNAP12 is directly addressing technical needs brought by the increasing data bandwidth demand of high-speed and high-resolution machine vision systems developed to tackle advanced manufacturing and automation challenges.
Reflex Photonics’ new SNAP12 are offered in both commercial (0 ºC to 70 ºC) and industrial operating temperatures (−40 ºC to 95 ºC) ranges at speeds up to 120 Gbps with data rate up to 10.3125 Gbps per lane. These modules underwent extensive testing to meet requirements for harsh environments and are 100% compatible with the industry standards.

SNAP12 are 12-lane parallel optical modules with a standard chassis-mount MPO interface. They are self-contained electrical-to-optical converters requiring no internal fiber management or handling. This is important for clients that prefer not to handle fragile optical cables. The simplicity and performance of SNAP12 makes them ideal module for many avionics, defense, industrial automation, and medical applications.

Guillaume Blanchette, product manager, adds:

Reflex Photonics is eager to support customers with their advanced manufacturing, automation, and machine vision designs and applications.
Reflex Photonics’ SNAP12 optical modules continue to be the product of choice for commercial avionic inflight entertainment systems.
We are committed to long-term support for the SNAP12 and to the broadening of this product line for higher data rates and I/O.

The objective of this white paper is to show how important and critical optical interconnect is becoming in the development of high-performance embedded systems.By: Gérald Persaud, VP Business Development and Michel Têtu, Senior Business Development Advisor

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Process

The Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance process (ISR) requires the collection and processing of signals generated by a large amount of sensors of various types like active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, high resolution cameras, sonars and so on. Analog signals are digitized and transmitted to a high performance embedded computing unit (HPEC) for data fusion and processing through high bit-rate fiber-optic links. Through deep learning algorithms, actions to be taken are identified and communicated to decisional centers.

ISR Technology Trends

HPEC are made of multiple high-speed microprocessors, memory and storage set on electronic boards usually interconnected through copper backplane circuitry.
However with the data rate of these interconnects reaching over 10 Gbps, optical interconnects begin to be the preferred choice due to their high bandwidth, high density I/O, low loss, low weight, and immunity against EMI.

Sensors: higher resolution cameras and radars

Processor: multicore, low power GPGPU, GPP, FPGA

Storage: solid state, small, rugged, reliable (RAID)

Sensor fusion: correlate information from sensors

Computing: Virtualization, parallel processing

Small SWaP: more capability for SFF (3U VPX)

All digital: multi-purposed, software defined functionality

Intelligent: learning machines

Data rich: real-time and historical data

Secure: hack-resistant communications

Reliable: no single point failure

Small: more payload for other systems

Scalable: simple upgrades, long life

Multi-purposed: target ID, weather, communications.

Illustration of the relation between the different elements of C4ISR systems (Command, Control, Compute, Communicate, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance).

ISR technology trends: BAE ARGUS IS system

Optical interconnect is used on ARGUS IS system

High BW, low latency

Small SWaP

High density

Defines system performance

Electrical vs optical interconnect power consumption

This diagram shows a rough evaluation of electrical power consumption for the connection of a sensor to an embedded computer system. Here we only consider the front-end of each system. Optic interconnect need 2 to 3 times less power than an electrical connection.

Under consideration

VITA 67.3C standard

Image courtesy of TE Connectivity

LightCONEX blind mate optical interconnect

For a higher level of integration, Reflex Photonics in collaboration with Amphenol Aerospace, developed optical blind mate connectors where the optical transceiver is directly embedded in the plug-in module connector following ANSI/VITA VPX technology.

Winning edge for design engineers

Recognizing the need for a ready-made test bench for its line of transceiver modules, Reflex Photonics introduces a complete line of Optical Tester for BER measurements on the LightABLE™ SR4 and SR12 rugged embedded transceivers and optical interconnects.
Currently, Reflex Photonics offers these different optical test instruments:

The Reflex Photonics Optical Testers will speed up the LightABLE performance validation and confirm successful integration into your system as it enables BER and eye diagram tests over the SR4 and SR12 transceivers. In addition, those products will enable your communication system BER assessment.
The Optical Generator/Tester integrates a PRBS (pseudo random bit signal) generator and an embedded BER measurement capability. This instrument acts like a BERT as it will directly perform optical communication system BER assessment. It will also act as an optical cross-connect OXC.

Dr. Jocelyn Lauzon, V.P. Engineering at Reflex Photonics adds:

These products offer an efficient, proven, and elegant ready-made solution that takes the guesswork out of testing performance and functionality of Reflex Photonics’ LightABLE.
Obviously, you can do the characterization of our transceiver, but if you replace the loopback cable by a bi-directional parallel optic communication system, the Optical Tester can be used to characterize the performance of a whole communication system. The communication bit rate and protocol can be changed, so the Optical Tester can be used to test different system architectures.

We are quite excited to announce that our LightABLE transceivers can withstand temperature ranging between −55 ºC and 100 ºC. This result reaffirms the reliability of the Reflex Photonics LightABLE transceivers and the suitability of these products for field deployment in harsh environments such as those found in military and space applications.

Mariana Iriarte, Associated Editor for Military Embedded Systems interviews Mr. Gerry Persaud, V.P. Business Development of Reflex Photonics on the challenges in the design process and where designs are trending for embedded optical modules.

Embedded optics enabling higher bandwidth computing

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems are driving the need for higher bandwidth computing and engineers have turned to ruggedized fiber optics to meet that demand. In this Q&A with Gerald Persaud, Vice President, Business Development at Reflex Photonics, discusses the challenges in the design process and where designs are trending for embedded optical modules; VITA Standards; and how secure communications, ISR, and radar systems are taking advantage of the technology.…Read the full article

Reflex Photonics is proud to announce that its LightABLE™ LH Series SR4 full-duplex 4 lane transceiver have proven they can withstand 2000 hours of “Lifetime Test” with no degradation of their performance. The successful completion of this industry-standard test is a first step in Reflex Photonics’ comprehensive space qualification program for its rugged transceivers.
A group of modules from the LightABLE LH product series were submitted to a “Lifetime Test” against MIL-STD-883J, method 1005, cond. D, June 2013. The test is conducted at a case temperature of 100 °C, 15 °C more than the recommended maximum operating temperature.
These units were tested against Reflex Photonics’ final production test procedure on all 8 channels, at different intervals, and at 3 different operating temperatures: −40 °C, 23 °C, and 85 °C. Even after 2000 hours of exposure to 100 °C temperatures, the LightABLE units maintained their high operational performance.

This result confirms the long-term reliability of the Reflex Photonics LightABLE transceivers and the suitability of these products for field deployment in harsh environments such as those found in military and space applications.
The LightABLE products are parallel optic interconnects operating at 10 Gbps per lane and offering the following features: small SWaP, operation over a large temperature range
(-40 °C to 85 °C), storage temperature from -57 °C to 125 °C. The LightABLE can be surface mounted or plugged on a board, and will support high temperature reflow process and operation with a link budget better than 13 dB.

Mr. Jocelyn Lauzon, Product Line Manager at Reflex Photonics adds:

When products are exposed to temperature stresses in the field, Accelerated Life Testing is used to simulate product life. In order to accelerate aging, products are tested at temperatures above that of their normal operating temperature.
Defects or failure that would only show up after many years in the field at normal operating temperatures can be detected in short times in an Accelerated Life Test.

Major aircraft companies looking for the best signal quality and bandwidth in their in-flight entertainment systems turn to the SNAP12 embedded transceiver for its ability to distribute the highest quality content at blazing speed.
Reflex Photonics, a leader in optical interconnects for IFES, has extended the quality and performance of the SNAP12 product family up to 75G in both commercial and industrial grade (−40°C to 85°C). This improved performance can extend the life of existing EVOP system and improve the performance at no extra cost for airliner. These modules underwent extensive testing to meet requirements for harsh environments. The Reflex’s SNAP12 are 100% compatible with the industry standards.
SNAP12 are 12 channel parallel optical modules with a standard chassis mount MPO interface. They are self-contained electrical-to-optical converters requiring no internal fiber management or handling.

Luis Perez, Sales Engineer, says:

The SNAP12 is the only solution that offers the best signal quality with no latency for the increasingly demanding IFES features such as Wi-Fi and cell phone support.
In addition, SNAP12 brings fault tolerance, reduces weight, and offers EMI/EMC and lightning tolerance over copper interconnects. There is no comparison… Reflex Photonics also keeps improving the SNAP12 performance with the planned development of a 120G version.